This may be
Young Chekhov but it's already time for a midlife crisis play in
the middle section of Jonathan Kent's productions of David Hare's translations.
Ivanov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) is 35 and depressed, feeling trapped in his
home with consumptive wife Anna Petrovna (a completely different Anna Petrovna but
again played by Nina Sosanya, showing range as she goes from educated woman to
completely dependent on her husband's attention,) and his bombastic uncle Count
Shabyelski (Peter Egan, from the 1980s.) As with the characters in
Platonov,
property doesn't always come with the money to maintain it, and Ivanov is hugely in
debt to the two women who between them control the town's finances. Ivanov begins an
affair with Sasha (Olivia Vinall,) daughter of his main creditor.
